


the only heaven i'll be sent to, is when i'm alone with you

by Starbursters



Category: Jamestown (TV)
Genre: F/M, james is devoted, jocelyn is possessive, sexual scenes do apply, spoilers for the end of season 3, verity is in the background cheering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 11:11:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19105924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starbursters/pseuds/Starbursters
Summary: It was August when Jocelyn finally exchanged her title as the Widow Castell, and instead became the lady wife of James Read.





	the only heaven i'll be sent to, is when i'm alone with you

It was August when Jocelyn finally exchanged her title as the Widow Castell, and instead became the lady wife of James Read. It was not the intimate, quiet affair James had once hoped for, nor the big, lavish to-do that Jocelyn had secretly desired, but in the end, among the smiling faces of their friends — they family they had found — they found themselves content.

 

The wedding was held publicly in hopes it would help rouse the good spirits of Jamestown. Or at least, of what folk remained following the Massacre in April. Over two-hundred colonists had lost their lives under the Pamunkey’s attacks. Women and children had been taken captive, houses had been sacked, crops had been burnt, and livestock had been stolen. Anger, confusion, grief, and other myriads of emotion had plagued Jamestown since, and what with survivors still straggling, there needed to be occasion for lighthearted revelry.

 

Jocelyn had been the one to pose this matter to Jamestown’s newly instated governor, Sir Francis Wyatt. Of course, Wyatt agreed. Jamestown’s former governor, the now lame George Yeardley, had disdained Governor Wyatt’s fondness for the widow, while Sir Yeardley’s wife, the newly mother Lady Temperance Yeardley, had been pleased to hear Wyatt proclaim the wedding’s date from the town center. She’d nearly lost her own child during the Massacre, unlike many of the town’s mothers, who’d screamed when the Pamunkey warriors dragged away their sons and daughters. Temperance had still been carrying, though she’d come dangerously close to miscarrying due to the trauma.

 

People had wept for days and weeks, and then months, in the aftermath, as graves were dug, and bodies of men, women, children, were laid to rest. The injured were cared for, as best as they could be without Doctor Priestley’s immediate attentions. For weeks, he lay among the injured, helpless but to receive what attentions the few medically-inclined of the townspeople could offer. He’d once attempted to rise from his sickbed, lost in a haze of his fever, but Mercy, who’d tended to the injured even in her delicate state, alongside a haunted Winganuske, had gently guided him back down to his bed, urging him to rest.

 

“Please, doctor,” she’d softly pleaded, taking the man’s clammy hand into her own. “You must not agitate your wounds. Perhaps it is selfish of me to say so, but we cannot survive this tragedy without you.” And perhaps it had been Mercy’s words, or Mercy herself, but Christopher Priestley had heeded the young woman's pleas, and, in another week’s time, was found to be able enough to assist the two Sharrow wives in administering medicines to his fellow survivors. 

 

For months, the people of Jamestown worked through their pains. They cleaned away the debris the attack had left behind, gathered what belongings they could salvage from the wreckage, and tended to what crops hadn’t been destroyed. The number of markers of the little graveyard outside the town’s palisade swelled with each burial, and it seemed, for a time, that, daily, there was another fresh grave to be dug.

 

It was a month after the attack when the man who would have been the town’s new blacksmith succumbed to the infection brought on by his wounds. He, too, was buried outside the palisade. With his replacement gone, and the town in dire need of a blacksmith, James Read took back his forge. The morning after his would-be replacement’s funeral found the tradesman bent over the forge’s fire, hammering hot metal into the tools that would be used to start repairs, his face grave, though covered in the dark of the forge’s smoke.

 

Jocelyn, who had been prepared to follow James out of Jamestown, had not questioned her love's decision. Instead, she’d taken hold of Master Crabtree’s shop (what remained of it) and decided to raise it from the rubble. She had lost her farm during the invasion, and, seeing that the Sharrow’s were near destitute with what remained of their own, Jocelyn had given what remained of her business to the Sharrows, citing her desire to ensure that Mercy did not fall into destitution due to her husband’s losses. Henry Sharrow had bristled at the thorns surrounding Jocelyn’s words, but Pepper and Silas had been smart enough to take Jocelyn’s veiled kindness with gratitude, duty-bound by Mercy’s teary relief, and the affection Jocelyn held for Mercy alone.

 

“Jamestown needs us,” Jocelyn had said to James, one night over their meager dinner at their table in the back of the Rutters’ tavern. Like most of the townspeople, Jocelyn and James had been staying at the tavern since the Massacre. They’d had little choice — the house James had shared with his fellow craftsmen was ruined, and Jocelyn’s house was badly in need of repair. 

 

The windows had all been broken, and the front door torn from its hinges. Tables, chairs, and all furniture had been ruined, with Jocelyn’s bed cracked, the mattress bearing deep gashes from where knives had been dragged. What remained of the sumptuous sheets became bandages for Doctor Priestley to use on survivors, and any stuffing from the pillows was gathered to be used in future projects. Jocelyn had lost almost all her valuables — valuables that she’d intended to leave to Mercy when Jocelyn had first resolved to leave with James upriver — but she’d managed to find several of her books somewhat intact, and was relieved to find the jewels she’d hidden beneath a loose floorboard under her writing desk still there.

 

James had been hesitant to share Jocelyn’s bed while knowing that the watchful, and judgmental eyes of the townspeople had knowledge, but at Jocelyn’s insistence (and Verity’s scolding once she’d learned of James’s quibbles), James had relented. Jocelyn had found his concerns absurd, citing that she would not be cowed by the townspeople’s eyes, especially not after James had fought so bravely during the Massacre. He’d defended not just Jocelyn, but many townspeople as well. To Jocelyn, if anyone deserved any looks, then it would be Sir Yeardley, who she strongly believed had brought upon the Massacre with his arrogance.

 

“Jamestown needs us, and…we cannot abandon them.”

 

James had looked up from his plate, his face wearing all the lines of a man plagued by hardship, and agreed. It’d been a day since the collective of James, Jocelyn, Maria, Meredith, and Verity, had buried Pedro’s body in a grave they’d dug alongside the river. Though Pedro had fought valiantly for Jamestown, because of the color of his skin he’d been deemed “unworthy” of being laid to rest in the town’s graveyard. Sir Yeardley had been the one to give the decree, though he’d oddly taken no glee in delivering the message. Still, Jocelyn had struck the former governor across the face, denounced him as leech, and then resolved to give Pedro a burial fitting of a man of his caliber.

 

“You did not know Pedro as we did,” Maria had said, suspicious of Jocelyn’s motivations. “So why do you do this for him?" It was a testament to the validity of Maria’s concerns that not even James had spoken against Maria.

 

“I may not have known him, Maria,” Jocelyn had said, face its usual framework of perceived indifference, “but I can see, clearly, that he was a good man.” She’d squared her shoulders, and lifted her chin. “And a good man deserves a respectable burial. If the people of Jamestown won’t allow us to give him that, then we shall give it to him ourselves.”

 

The men had dug the grave while the women had gathered wild flowers to lay at the foot of the crude metal cross James had hastily forged to mark Pedro’s grave. When the grave was dug, and the flowers had been gathered, Meredith and James, together, had lowered Pedro’s canvassed body into the dirt, while Jocelyn and Verity had held a sobbing Maria. 

 

Maria had cried throughout the burial, but once the dirt had been replaced, and the grave covered, her sobs tapered off, until she was dropping her own handful of dirt onto the grave, laying her own bundle of flowers at the metal cross, eyes still wet, but no new tears to be found.

 

Jocelyn had held James’s hand throughout the small ceremony, squeezing it when she believed to see tears gathering at the corners of James’s eyes.

 

At Pedro’s grave, James had been quiet, only speaking when to add his prayers to Verity’s, Meredith’s, and Maria’s. But in the tavern, James had been somber, contemplative, and solemn. The dreams he’d had of adventure beyond Jamestown had been made tattered by tragedy. No longer had the vision of exploration seemed appealing. Though he’d once been ready to leave, with Jocelyn at his side, the James Read that had prepared to go up river had been a man not rankled by the duties and inclinations festered by a man who’d experienced great tragedy.

 

“If we stay...things won’t be like they once were, Jocelyn,” James had said that night in the tavern. “I won’t let this town’s poison take root in me again.”

 

“It never took root at the start,” Jocelyn had countered. “You are far too chivalrous a man, and too kind a soul, to have ever been swayed by the demons that still haunt this miserable place."

 

“And will you take up the call again?” James had asked, voice a little quiet. "To fight these demons?” Though his question was base, Jocelyn knew what James was truly asking. Will things be as they were before the attack? Would Jocelyn take up her politics and wield her vengeance once more?

 

Would she forget James, and all she had promised that day of Mercy’s wedding, when he'd asked her to follow him.

 

With an incensed heart, Jocelyn had grabbed James Read by his collar and pulled him in close. Their lips had almost been touching.

 

“You will listen to me, James Read, and you will appreciate what I have to say. I will be your wife, your hopes, your dreams, for as long as God wills it. I will take your name to be mine even after I draw my last breath. And I will give you children, as foolish and stubborn as you, to carry our likeness, once we both have left this green earth."

 

Her lips, so tempting, had brushed his as she reeled him in closer. “And when it is time for our judgement, God will look into your heart and know you to be mine, just as he will look into my heart and know me to be yours."

 

And James, who’d been staring into Jocelyn’s eyes so intently, so longingly, with eyes full of heartache, had found his words. “Is that what you have decided?”

 

“It is what we have decided, together, James Read. I was a fool when I thought I could make myself not love you, and you were more the fool when you decided to love me despite knowing this.” Jocelyn had released her grip on James’s collar. "But you have made me a fool, James Read, and if I am to be a fool, then so shall you. Do you have something to say?”

 

But instead of speaking, James had pressed his lips to Jocelyn’s, ending her speech, and starting a fire of need in both their bellies. They’d then slipped out the tavern’s back door and stolen into the nearby barn. The same barn where they’d first laid down in the hayloft a year and a half ago.

 

Not since James had lost Corrina had he loved Jocelyn with such desperation and longing. In the liberating darkness of the hayloft, James’s body moved against Jocelyn’s, their limbs slippery with wet, the hay tickling their skin. They’d lost their shoes somewhere in their scramble to divest themselves of their garments. Jocelyn’s skirts had been rucked up around her waist, and James had his breeches around his ankles, but as James thrust into Jocelyn with his soft grunts and half pants, Jocelyn cradled James’s face in her hands, brought her lips to his ear, and whispered silken words.

 

“You are mine, James Read...and so you shall always be mine. No matter what trials lie in our future…no matter what foes we might face…I shall have you…by my side…just as you…shall have me.”

 

“Forever and…eternity,” James had grunted as he crested. He’d then taken Jocelyn’s lips with his own, pressing a kiss so searing that Jocelyn felt its fervent passions to her very bones. It carried her high through her release, and delivered her back down to earth, to James’s arms.

 

The tears James had been reigning back since the burial finally burst forth, and he’d wept against Jocelyn’s brow. But instead of admonishing the man for his sensitivity, Jocelyn had brought her arms about his shoulders and held him close, allowing him to empty himself of his grief. She'd held him through each sob that wracked his body, and pressed kisses to his cheek with each new wave of tears. 

 

“I am sorry,” she’d whispered, kissing away another tear. “I am sorry.”

 

James hadn’t cried for long. After a while, his eyes had stopped watering, and his cheeks had started to dry. He'd slid from Jocelyn’s body, pulling her against his side, and brushing his lips against her brow.

 

“Thank you,” he’d said, hands resting at Jocelyn’s waist.

 

They’d laid together in the hayloft for a while longer, tucked into one another’s bodies, wrapped in the intimacy they’d shared. But soon, their sweat had cooled, so they’d risen from their hay bed, collected their clothes, and redressed. They returned to the tavern, climbing into their bed with as little noise as possible, and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

 

“Soon, we shall have our own bed,” Jocelyn promised as James drifted off to sleep. “And in that bed, just as now, you shall lay at my side."

 

When Jocelyn’s house was finished with its repairs, James Read entered the house at Jocelyn’s side. When her bed was repaired, it was James Read who laid in it at Jocelyn’s side later that night, just as Jocelyn had promised he would. At the threshold of the bedroom, James had swept Jocelyn up into his arms, and, despite Jocelyn, mild protest at being handled so, James had carried Jocelyn through the threshold, into the room, and then laid her down on the bed. 

 

“Shall I lay here at your side, ma’am?” he’d asked in voice so husky.

 

With her skin flushed, her heart thumping with anticipation, Jocelyn had grabbed hold of James’s vest and pulled him down on top of her.

 

“You shall."

 

By the time the wedding date was finally announced, Jocelyn and James were considered to be already very much married.

 

Still, a wedding would be held for the benefit of the people of Jamestown.

 

Verity had managed to convince (read, harangued) the groom into wearing a finely tailored shirt with his dusty trousers and old boots. She’d ironed the shirt herself the night before, singing while she worked, filling the ramshackle tavern with her merry tune while Tam had assisted Meredith with preparing the Rutters' wedding gift of the finest ale for the wedding feast. 

 

“Tis a tad big on ya’,” she when she helped James Read into the shirt the morning of his wedding, “but won’t your bride be rosy cheeked when she sees the lion-heart she’s to marry!”

 

“Lion-heart!” Tam laughed. His shirt’s sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, and his hands were still wet from scrubbing the tavern’s cups till they shined. “He looks a stuffed pheasant to me—owww!"

 

Meredith took the boy’s ear in hand. “Respect your ma’s work, boy.” He gave his wife a beaming smile. “She’s a woman of great talent.” Then he gave Tam’s ear one more good tug before letting go. “Won’t you agree, Tam?”

 

Tam rubbed at his ear, his face a picture of soreness. “I suppose…” 

 

James wasn’t able to keep himself from chuckling at the child’s misfortune, grateful that Meredith had not picked his fun. Though Meredith was not the sort to pass up a good jest at James’s expense, he no longer allowed any cheek against his wife to go unchecked.

 

Truly, the Massacre had given Meredith sobering cause to become more of a disciplinarian towards the boy he and Meredith had unofficially adopted. After all, the former town drunk nearly lost an arm when he’d wrestled a Pamunkey warrior away from trying to steal Tam. The warrior had brandished a knife from his pouch and poised it right above Meredith’s heart.  Fortunately, Verity had kept the sword James had once given her, and stuck the sword’s point into the warrior’s back.

 

“A wife like none other,” Meredith had told James Read a week after the attack, his arm in a sling. “The Natural was gonna to stick me with his knife right there if not for her!” Verity had not winced when she’d stuck her sword down into the enemy. She’d not flinched when she’d pulled the sword from it's bloody sheath. She’d had no time to tremble. Instead, she’d helped Meredith to his feet, while ordering Tam to gather all the tavern’s knives. 

 

“You’ve a lion-heart in your wife,” James had stated so matter-of-factly. “Be grateful to her.” Meredith had taken James’s words to heart. Since then, Meredith’s cups were watered, and his drunken stupors became few. Even at James and Jocelyn’s wedding feast did he drink very little, and was very much still sober when he spun his wife in the circles of her homeland when it came time to dance.

 

“Have you ever seen such gallantry before,” James whispered into the ear of his bride as they watched from their seats at the feast table as the Rutters danced.

 

Jocelyn chuckled, a chime-like merriment ringing in her heart as she watched Meredith take his fiery-red wife into his arms and dip her low. A round of laughter circled the feast, drawing out another married pair, who turned circles about the Rutters. It spurred a competition of sorts among the couples.

 

“You forget, my dear poet,” Jocelyn slyly said, “that no person here can dare hope to be as gallant as you.”

 

Perhaps it was the drink making her cheeks rosy, or the way her blue dress brought out the blue of her eyes, but James Read found himself spurred to rise up from his seat, and offer his bride his hand.

 

“Then, ma’am, might such a gallant man have the pleasure of taking your hand for this dance?"

 

The feast’s crowd began to hoot and holler. Meredith and Verity and the rest of the dancing men and women paused mid-spins in their contest to join the ruckus. Even Mercy Sharrow, heavy with child, and firmly seated beside her doting husband and Maria at the end of the table, found her voice rising loudly with the town’s.

 

“Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!”

 

Jocelyn need only see the gleam of challenge in her husband’s eye, and she accepted his hand. “For this dance, and every dance after, James Read.”

 

Even Doctor Priestley, with his scarred face, and past heartache for the bride, cheered as Jocelyn pulled James through the crowd’s circle. The musicians started a wild jig, and Verity let out a cry of joy when she knew the song to be familiar. She began to clap her hands in time with the music’s rhythm, the pitch of her voice sharp as she cried:

 

“Spin her wild, James Read!”

 

And James did. He spun Jocelyn around till she was almost dizzy. Swung her about the grass floor with one arm, two arms, till Jocelyn’s skin was flushed with a tempting color. Several times he lifted her high in the air, the town’s cheers growing higher and higher, while a thin sheen of sweat began to bead upon Jocelyn’s brow. But she was not to be exhausted so far from her wedding bed, and threw herself into each spin, turn, hop, and swing with the stubborn resolve she wielded almost daily.

 

But the dancing did become too much, and with the August heat growing past bearable, Jocelyn was starting to think how nice their dancing would be if they were all alone, without any shirt, trousers, stockings, or dress to separate Jocelyn from James’s body. And as James spun her, his warm eyes taking in every bead of sweat upon Jocelyn’s naked neck, Jocelyn knew James was thinking the same.

 

So they were both grateful when the jig finally came to an end, Jocelyn tight against James’s body, and James’s arms encircling Jocelyn’s waist devotedly. Their skin was flushed by their exertions, and their breathing was rapid, as they finally caught their breath. Around them the crowd stamped their feet and roared their approval.

 

“For the groom and his most lovely bride!” Verity cheered when she raised her cup high one last time that night. Her cheeks were red, her eyes were shining, her gait was most certainly hampered by drink. “May they be blessed with all the happiness, and all the babes!” Her toast caused a hale of laughter to reign down at the feast’s end, and a bemused Meredith found himself having to carry his wife back to the tavern. A forlorn Tam had followed along, disappointed to have not gotten his fill of ale.

 

The bride and groom had wasted little time in returning to their home. Filled with drink, and stuffed from the festivities, husband and wife found themselves laughing as they made their way to the house’s front door. Jocelyn had barely gotten the door’s lock undone when James, just as he had the first night they’d lain together in their bed months ago, swept Jocelyn up into his arms, and carried her into the house.

 

When Jocelyn awoke the next morning, it was with a pulse in the back of her head, and a satisfying soreness in her legs. When sat up against the mussed pillows, her body ached most tellingly. Telling stories of the attentions and devotions made most ardently by the man lying, still asleep, at Jocelyn’s side.

 

Never before, had Jocelyn been so well loved. And as she carefully slid back down beside James’s sleeping body, Jocelyn recalled each caress, kiss, thrust, and suck, of the night before. With each fevered image came a strong need curling in Jocelyn’s belly, and though she knew her husband deserved an uninterrupted rest, she found herself waking him with a kiss.

 

“Woman,” James complained, voice cracking with a yawn. “Do you never tire?”

 

Jocelyn laid a hand against the skin of Jame’s chest, and slowly let it descend beneath the covers. “We’ve scant time before we must return to the world outside, James Read.” He released a grunt when her hand stopped, his muscles tensing as Jocelyn’s fingers began to spur the interest of James’s more masculine organs.

 

As Jocelyn worked, James’s breathing starting to quicken, she gave her husband a most conniving smile, and, cocking her head to the side, said, "Why waste that time with sleep when we might be so…entertained?”

 

“How can a man possibly entertain, Lady Read,” James grunted, his hips starting to buck, "when he lacks the energy to do so?”

 

His answer came in the swift movement Jocelyn made of swinging a leg across James’s body, sliding herself along the length of him, and then rising up above him, her hand now guiding James to a place of keen interest. As Jocelyn sank back down onto James, straddling him wantonly, she let out a little gasp, face a shift of pleasure.

 

James could only groan as Jocelyn began to move.

 

“You promised to serve me,” Jocelyn stated. “As a husband should serve his wife.”

 

“Aye,” James grunted. His hold upon Jocelyn’s hips became a grip. “And this is how my wife expects me to serve her?”

 

Jocelyn bent forward, gasping as James began to guide her rhythm. “This and more, James Read."

 


End file.
